Growing delicious vegetables from seeds is one of the most rewarding of all
gardening activities. We gardeners get started doing it with great anticipation
and relish. Selecting seed varieties can be a little daunting because there are
lots of choices. To further complicate things, both the gardening press and the
marketing arm of many of the seed catalogs sing the virtues of older open
pollinated, heirloom varieties or sleek new hybrids, implying that one kind is
better than the other or even more politically correct. What's a gardener to do!
Looking more closely at how open pollinated, heirloom and hybrid seeds are
developed and come to market may bring some degree of clarity to the subject.

A few basic
definitions are in order to begin any discussion. The term F-1 hybrid
means the first filial generation made by crossing two different parent
varieties, the offspring of which produce a new, uniform seed variety with
specific characteristics from both parents. For example, breeders may choose to
cross two tomato varieties to make an F-1 hybrid that exhibits the early
maturity of one parent with a specific disease resistance of the other. The
unique characteristics of an F-1 hybrid are very uniform only in the first
generation of seed, so seed saved from F-1 plants will not come true if
replanted and may exhibit many distinct types in the second generation, often
reverting to various ancestral forms. To produce consistent F-1 hybrids, the
original cross must be repeated each season. As in the original cross, this is
done through careful and controlled hand pollination and seed production is
often offshore, where labor is cheaper. Many common home garden tomatoes, such
as Early Girl, Celebrity, or
Carmello are F-1 hybrids, and most commercial fruiting vegetables seen in
supermarkets like eggplants, tomatoes, melons and bell peppers are grown from
F-1 hybrid varieties.

Open pollinated
seeds are a result of either natural or human selection for specific traits,
which are then reselected in every crop. The seed is kept true to type through
selection and isolation; open pollinated or O.P. seed varieties are pollinated
by having bees or wind pollinate the flowers. Their traits are relatively fixed,
within a range of variability. For example, if I grew the Brandywine variety of
open pollinated tomato in dry Northern California summers year after year and
saved seeds only from the best tasting, earliest ripening fruits in my climate
zone, I would have a locally adopted strain of Brandywine, varied from the
Brandywine seed saved by a gardener in humid, rainy Alabama who has been saving
seeds from fruits that produce very well in Alabama, rather than my California
conditions.

All
heirloom varieties are open pollinated, but not all open pollinated
varieties can be considered heirlooms. Unfortunately the definition of
“heirloom” has been somewhat of a moving target recently, but, generally; it
means a variety, that is at least 50 years old, and that has been preserved and kept true in a particular
region. So, for example if a particular kind of open pollinated pepper has been
grown in Vermont or Maine for 5 or 6 generations and seed has been selected and
saved by local growers and gardeners, it would be considered an heirloom
variety. Obviously, heirloom varieties have been saved because they have some
real virtues. The classic examples are heirloom tomatoes which often have
superior flavor, color or texture for home garden situations but lack the
holding ability, disease resistance or early maturity, etc., that would make
them commercially viable.

Seed saving organizations, specialty seed companies and home gardeners have been
the agents that have kept heirloom varieties in existence over time, as larger
seed companies generally focus on varieties (both O.P. and F-1) with commercial
qualities. Fortunately in the last few years the popularity of heirlooms like
Mortgage Lifter, Brandywine, and Marvel Stripe tomatoes has been growing
rapidly, and some seed producing companies have started to make them available
to home garden seed sellers once again.

I think that both hybrid and open pollinated/heirloom varieties deserve a
legitimate place in any home garden. Hybrids can offer uniform fruit often with
superior disease resistances, reliable productivity and a particular maturity
range. So, if I garden in an area that has a very short season with serious soil
nematodes, I can choose a tomato hybrid developed to produce ripe fruit early
and whose plants resist nematodes. If I garden in containers, I look for
F-1 hybrids bred to grow into a short spreading bush with concentrated harvests.

With tomatoes, it is often said that F-1 hybrids lack flavor, but that depends
on which ones are planted. It’s true that many commercial tomato that varieties
have not been bred with top flavor as a priority in the USA. But many hybrids
bred for home garden, like our hybrid beef steak,
Big Beef , taste great, and there are many hybrids from Europe, where flavor
has been more commonly a commercial breeding goal, that are quite delicious,
like our Crimson
Carmello, which was bred in France. Brassica family F-1 hybrids like our
All Seasons broccoli, are a first choice in my garden because they are much
more resistant to pests, disease, and weather fluctuations, and have been bred
to be space saving and compact.

Open
pollinated fruiting vegetables also have a lot to offer. If you enjoy saving
seed, you can choose those open pollinated varieties that produce the best
tasting and easy growing harvests and save seed from their best plants to use
every season. It’s fun to become a backyard breeder this way and develop your
own selected cultivar. Heirloom, open pollinated varieties usually have a
beloved local history and may exhibit unusual colors, shapes or flavors. They
may ripen over a prolonged season or been selected to do well in a specific
area. One of my favorites is
Lemon cucumbers. This 100+ year old heirloom variety effortlessly produces
loads of fruit just the size and shape of pale colored lemons. They have a mild
sweet flavor, crisp texture and thin skins, and are dual purpose: perfect for
eating fresh or pickling . I also love planting a rainbow of tomatoes, so by
choosing heirlooms, I can go way beyond ordinary red tomatoes and grow big,
juicy orbs that ripen up to yellow, orange, pink, bicolored, cream or even
purple/black! All have colorful histories and while they may not produce as
plentifully or as reliably as F-1 red slicers, I wouldn’t be without them every
summer.

In the home garden and farm stand arenas of the seed industry, consumers can
really influence the market. When gardeners demand lots of choices and make that
known to the nurseries or catalogs where they purchase their seed packets, more
kinds of open pollinated heirlooms are once again grown out and seeds become
available. Chefs and restaurants have also given much more visibility to old
varieties by featuring them, as vegetables have moved to the center of the plate
in food fashion over the last decade.

As in most areas of life, gardeners can and should celebrate diversity. Ask for
and grow both the best hybrids and exceptional heirlooms. Enjoy the process of
seeing what successes each growing season produces and keep experimenting with
both new F-1 introductions and revitalized old favorites. In the end, gardening
is an art in consistent evolution in everyone’s backyard, and a full palette of
variety options are its tools.